


Just Bros Doing Bro Stuff

by mattygroves



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M, and then there's a kiss right, everyone's a little gay in the desert, joshua tree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 21:14:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5759059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattygroves/pseuds/mattygroves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Poe had asked him to go to Joshua Tree for the weekend—Poe, super popular, super cool...super hot—Finn was so surprised he blurted out:</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Cuz that’s what bros do around here,” Poe said with that disarming (shit-eating) grin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Bros Doing Bro Stuff

Finn couldn’t pretend he wasn’t nervous. He was a bit of a wreck, actually, as he checked and re-checked that he had remembered his toothbrush and deodorant.

When Poe had asked him to go to Joshua Tree for the weekend—Poe, super popular, super cool...super hot—Finn was so surprised he blurted out:

“Why?”

“Cuz that’s what bros do around here,” Poe said with that disarming (shit-eating) grin.

‘Here’ was college. Finn was a Freshman and Poe had the all-knowing air of sophomore—he had just transferred after a year at community college and already had way more friends than Finn. And now, apparently, Finn was one of them? (They lived on the same floor, so yeah, Finn had seen Poe shirtless...)

His foster mom had thought it would be good for Finn to go away to school. She hadn’t said it, but they both knew she meant away from the kids from high school who called him “queer”, and not in the cool, self-empowering, re-appropriating way he had learned about on Tumblr, but still wasn’t super comfortable with...because, trauma.

“It’ll be good to expand your horizons, meet new people,” Leia had said.

“Sure,” Finn had said. So they found him a school an hour away from the nearly all white suburb he had grown up in. Yeah, growing up black and liking to bake hadn’t really made him super popular. Still, he found himself driving back most weekends for the comfort of home and his foster father’s homemade pizza.

Han always made his own sauce and froze a dozen containers of it at time. Lately he had been talking about making his own ricotta and trying his hand at lasagna. I mean, how could Finn hang around boring college parties with that siren call ever present in mind.

Sitting around the table with Han and Leia and his foster sister Rey (a genius, by the way, which was super annoying), was really all Finn wanted after the chaos of a childhood spent in the system before landing at the Solo’s home at the age of 14.

“I just thought it’d be fun,” Poe was saying, scratching the back of his neck where his ridiculous dark brown curls met his ridiculous deeply tan skin. “And I noticed you go home a lot on the weekends, so I thought this would be a nice change?”

He actually sounded hopeful. Like he would be disappointed if Finn said no. What was happening?

“Ok,” he said, surprising them both.

#

They met in the hallway. Finn had dumped his textbooks on his bed and filled his backpack with a few extra t-shirts and underwear. What the hell was he doing?

“Is that all you brought?”

“Should I have more stuff?”

“Uh, yeah. Do you have a sleeping bag or anything? Definitely bring your pillow. Those shoes should be fine,” he said, eyeing Finn’s brightly colored trainers. “They’ll get dusty, though.”

“That’s ok.”

“Do you have pants and a jacket?” Poe asked.

“Uh, I can grab some pants.”

“Ok, meet you back here in a sec.”

They both disappeared into their dorm rooms and emerged a moment later, Poe carrying a brown puffer jacket with a faux fur collar.

“It was my dad’s in the 70s. I know it’s ridiculous but it’ll keep you warm.”

“Thanks.”

#

The drive was a couple hours long and a little awkward. They talked about classes, people they knew in common, which were mostly other guys on their floor. There was a lot of silence, but Poe didn’t seem to mind, so Finn tried not to either. He also tried to not stare at Poe’s hands on the steering wheel.

#

Poe had a lot of gear. He set up a pop-up tent with a shade canopy, two chairs, and a camp stove on the site’s picnic table.

“My family went camping a lot when I was little,” he said, sheepishly. “My dad and I still go sometimes.”

“Your mom doesn’t like it?”

“She loved it, but she, uh, died. When I was eight.”

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry.”

“Your family’s not very outdoorsy, I take it?” Poe changed the subject.

“No,” Finn laughed, “when I was fifteen my parents tried to take us on a ski trip. Han hated the cold. It was a bit of a disaster, but Rey had fun and got good at skiing after one lesson. She’s good at everything, though.”

“Rey’s your sister?”

“Foster. Adopted, now I guess. That part’s pretty new, so I keep forgetting that and calling them my foster family, but Han and Leia adopted me last year before I aged out of the system. Rey's been with them a little longer.”

“They sound cool.”

“Yeah.”

“Wanna climb some big rocks?”

“Yeah.”

#

Shit, Finn thought later as they sat by the fire, he’s a really good cook. It was Finn’s kryptonite. And on a camp stove, too. I’m fucked.

#

Poe’s plan turned out to be a good one. As always seems to happen when two people stare into a fire on a cold night out in the glories of nature—(“Fuck me,” Finn had said when he noticed the stars for the first time. Poe was just glad Finn missed the look on his face while he stared at the sky. His throat looked really good [biteable?] stretching out of that ridiculous jacket)—talking came more easily. Words didn’t simply tumble into the darkness, though. They came slowly, thoughtfully, purposefully.

Poe was talking about growing up in Guatemala and coming to the US with his parents at the age of five.

Finn talked about his childhood, too, but not a lot. That would come later. He talked about his life now, though. His genius sister who he loved to death, how she was only sixteen and knew exactly what she wanted to do (engineering), and how he couldn’t even pick a major and wasn’t even sure why he was in college at all.

Well, he knew why he was there. Because Leia wanted it for him and he couldn’t bear to disappoint her. He hadn’t even admitted that to himself.

“What do you like to do?” Poe asked.

Usually that question annoyed him, even though the people asking him (Rey, Han, Leia) were always and only trying to help.

“I,” he felt his mouth go dry and almost chickened out, “I like to bake.”

“I wanna kiss you,” Poe said, and by the look on his face he was clearly as surprised as Finn.

“Is that what bros do?” Finn couldn’t help asking.

“Yeah. In the desert.”

He was pulling Finn, unreluctantly, out the camp chair.

“Everyone’s a little gay in the desert,” Poe said, close to his face.

After they kissed and Finn caught his breath again, he said:

“I’m a little gay everywhere.”

“Me too, buddy,” Poe said, moving in for more.

#

Back in the dorm hallway on Sunday night, Finn started to shrug off the jacket he hadn’t taken off all weekend.

“Keep it,” Poe said, “It suits you.”

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic ever, I hope you like it!


End file.
